Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

"Good work, Todd." Jake rose and signaled to the two morgue workers lounging by the door. "Go ahead and take the body to the morgue. And keep her in this same position, or you'll destroy any trace evidence on her back. I'll do the autopsy first thing tomorrow morning. If you want to assist, Todd, be there by eight a.m."

Jake watched as they transferred the body, the extremities still partially stiffened with rigor, onto a gurney. If this was truly the work of the Vampire, why had his methods changed? Why had he found it necessary to kill this victim, when he hadn't seriously harmed the others? The case had morphed. What had been a fascinating academic puzzle for him to decode had escalated to murder. He'd gotten what he wanted-the chance to work on the Vampire case-but it had come at the cost of Amanda Hogaarth's life.

"Have you contacted the next of kin?" Jake asked the detective.

"Doesn't seem to be anybody. Her apartment application lists a lawyer as the person to contact in an emergency. Least I don't have to break the news to some heartbroken daughter or sister." Pasquarelli grunted thanks to a passing stream of CSIs.

"We didn't get much," the oldest one said. "Cleanest apartment I ever saw."

Jake thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "Something's here, Vito. We have to look with our eyes wide open. I'm going to nose around again."

"Be my guest."

Jake did the roundabout again, but if anything, the apartment seemed even more nondescript than before. Then in the kitchen, amid the spotless cabinets and appliances, Jake found it. There, pushed back behind the gleaming pots, was one clue that Amanda Hogaarth had lived a real life and knew someone else on the planet-a battered book with a faded cover and spidery handwritten notations in the margins: Recetas Favoritas.

Jake cradled it in his hands. A cookbook, a Spanish-language cookbook, not placed on a shelf for easy reference, but hidden away. Like love letters, Jake thought. Or pornography. He gently put it down.

Manny stormed up the steps of the federal building in Newark, New Jersey, her heels rapping out a battle cry. Tossing her red leather tote on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed, Manny charged through the metal detector, which immediately began hooting out a warning.

"Step back out, ma'am," the marshal instructed. "Any keys or change in your pockets?"

"Of course not," she snapped. Her sea green Donatella Versace suit didn't even have pockets, and if it did, she certainly wouldn't destroy its sleek lines by carrying around lumps of keys.

"Unbutton your jacket."

Manny did as she was told. "Whoops! I forgot I was wearing that." She undid the vintage double-link chain belt from her waist, dropped it in the guard's basket, and stepped through the metal detector without incident.

On the other side, the guard was holding the belt, calling for a tape measure.

"C'mon, give that back," Manny commanded. "I'm in a hurry. I've got an urgent meeting with a client."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but security regulations prohibit lengths of chain longer than four feet. Can't let metal belts longer than forty-eight inches into the building. Same regulations as on a plane."

"That accessory set me back a few hundred dollars. Do you honestly think I'd use it to chain a federal prosecutor to his desk?"

"I need to measure it first," the guard insisted. "I gotta find a tape."

Manny opened her mouth to howl in protest at the absurd delay. But before a word escaped, she stopped, grinned, and held open her suit jacket. "Look, Xavier," she said, reading the guard's name tag, "you're insulting me here. I know I'm not a size two, but does it look like I need four feet of chain to go around this waist?"

Xavier flushed as he studied her hourglass figure. "Um, I guess not. Sorry, ma'am. Here you go."

"This terrorism stuff is getting ridiculous," Manny fumed to the man riding the elevator with her. "They spend all their resources hassling average citizens, and there are probably Al Qaeda operatives camped out a mile from the Pentagon."

The man said nothing, but he took a step away from her as she pounded the button for the seventh floor yet again. When the elevator finally delivered her, Manny was in a fine state, and woe be unto the federal prosecutor who crossed her.

"Philomena Manfreda here to see Brian Lisnek," she told the receptionist ensconced behind the bulletproof glass window.

The young woman started to gesture toward a chair in the waiting area, but one look at the set of Manny's jaw changed her mind and she buzzed Lisnek immediately. "You'll have to sign in. And wear this tag at all times." She spoke as if she carried a gun.

Lisnek, a stocky sandy-haired man in a rumpled gray suit, opened the secured door. Manny soon found herself seated with him in a typical government office-windowless, crammed with unfiled papers, furnished with a metal desk and old scarred wood chairs, and equipped with a computer whose screen dissolved into the American bald eagle.

"Where is my client, Travis Heaton? I want to talk to him before I talk to you."

"He's in a holding cell downstairs with one of our agents. I'll have the guard take him to a lawyer's window. His mother is in the waiting area down there, in case she's needed."

"You mean in case she's needed to sign a statement giving her son permission to confess to a crime he didn't commit. Well, there will be no statement. Tell your homeboy not to question him any longer. My client is exercising his Fifth Amendment rights."

Lisnek seemed unperturbed, as if this was just another day in his life dealing with a run-of-the-mill defense attorney. Manny didn't care for the look of smug self-confidence on the prosecutor's round face. "What are the charges against him?"

"Terrorist attack on U.S. government property. There will be a number of charges of violation of Title 18, then double that for violations of the U.S. postal code. And, of course, attempted murder. Assume twenty, thirty main charges, a few related subsidiary charges, a number of conspiracy charges, and maybe a racketeering charge, give or take a few."

"Oh, come on. Whoever did this, you know it was just a prank with a regrettable unintended injury."

"Ms. Manfreda, the attempted assassination of a federal judge is not a 'regrettable unintended injury.' And there are no pranks in the metropolitan area these days." • • • "Thank God you're here!"

Manny would not have pegged the woman who greeted her in the visitors' area as the mother of a Monet Academy student. Slightly overweight, with deeply etched worry lines in her forehead, she wore a plain gold band on her right ring finger, indicating she was a widow, and jeans and a sweatshirt that she must've thrown on when she got the call that her son was in jail. No diamonds, no Cartier, no tightly Botoxed skin. Mrs. Maureen Heaton looked too normal, and too hardworking, to be the kind of mother who could produce the money and the connections necessary to get her son into the city's most exclusive prep school.

Manny extended her hand. "Philomena Manfreda, Mrs. Heaton. I'd like to sit down with your son and find out exactly what's going on. But it's hard here. We have to talk through a wired-glass window by phone. And now, under the Patriot Act, even my conversations can be monitored if they think I am passing messages on to his accomplices."

"But that's only if he's guilty," Mrs. Heaton protested. "My Travis is a good boy. You've got to get him out of this place. They can't keep him here. And you can't let them take him to a prison. He's only a child. Please."

"How old is Travis, ma'am?"

"He just turned eighteen, in his senior year at Monet. He's always been small for his age, and a little immature, but very bright."

Inwardly, Manny winced. Eighteen was bad-the kid would be charged as an adult, and if she didn't manage to get him off, he'd face a prison term and a criminal record that would follow him all his life. A really bad trade-off for the momentary thrill of watching a mailbox explode.